When getting your home ready to put on the market remember that first impressions count the most. Without a good first impression you won't have a chance to make a second impression because people won't make an appointment. Mow the front yard twice as often as the back. Does the inside or outside of your house need a fresh coat of paint? Paint is one of the most effective and cheapest "spruce ups" you can do. Leave the front porch light on every night. Make sure the windows are clean. FIX IT! Whatever is not working properly or broken - FIX IT! Clean your closets. A clean closet is a bigger closet. Keep your pool clean year round!! Remove YOU from the house. You are not selling your family, furnishings or lifestyle so get rid of anything that would get in the way of people mentally putting themselves into your house. You are moving anyway so get a head start, pack up and move out everything you can. Your phone answerer sells! Record a message that tells a little about the house. Check with your phone company about a "distinctive ring" 2nd line and use that number on all advertising. It doesn't require any re-wring, can be set up in less than a day and is a cheap way to tell when you are receiving a call on the house. Hold an Open House the first 2 week ends. This allows the Built-in Buyers easy access to your home to (Built-in Buyers are the people who are already looking for a home in your neighborhood). DO NOT hold an Open House EVERY week end after this 2 week period as it makes you appear desperate. OPEN HOUSE SCRIPT Use Post-it Notes throughout the house to answer the most asked questions or just to point out easily missed features. Utilize all the avenues to the brain. Make your house smells nice as well as looks nice. Baking an apple pie or bread during an Open House is a nice touch. Don't go overboard with the room deodorizers or it looks as if you are hiding something. Contain your pets. Some people are allergic, others are scared. SELL YOUR AREA! This is one area an Agent is woefully inadequate! They don't want to sell your area because it limits them to showing homes in only one neighborhood. Point out the nice neighbors, shopping, babysitters, churches, parks, etc. Make people want to live in your neighborhood and it will make them want to live in your house. Be aware of other homes for sale in the neighborhood. Stay on top of prices and visit these homes during their Open Houses so you can honestly compare features. If you don't stay on top of things a sharp buyer might try to convince you another home has many more features, is much larger than your house or is being offered for less money. Make sure there are always sales graphics in your box on the yard sign. It makes Buyers mad to find an empty box. Make it easy for a Buyer to get information about your house. Offer to pay all or a portion of the Buyers closing costs. Paying a portion of the Buyer's costs is almost standard. It is such a common occurrence that the newest state promulgated contracts don't even ask IF you will be paying a portion of the Buyer's costs, only HOW MUCH. We can show you how to do this without it costing you a penny! An added plus is that you get an extra tax write off if you pay the Buyer's closing costs! Out of pocket expense is the number one impediment to owning a home. If you offer to pay closing costs you will attract many more Buyers and make your house stand out from the crowd of competing homes on the market. Study the Purchase Agreement BEFORE it is time to write one so that you can appear confident and knowledgeable instead of nervous when it comes time to write one for real. Call us, we'll go over the Purchase Agreement with you as many times as necessary to make you feel comfortable. An added plus is that if the Buyer uses one of our Lender Partners for their financing the Lender Partner will either help with or write the contract for you. Successful For Sale By Owners commit to selling their home themselves, not just "try it out" for a while. If you are not serious don't even begin. To date all the people who have used our iPLUS services have sold their homes, but less than half of the people using the Internet only packages do. It is not a matter of advertising, but a matter of Seller commitment. The police say the best way to protect yourself from the bad guys is to be "obviously aware" so insist that everyone who enters your home sign in with a legible name, address and phone number. When showing your home, take the Buyer thru and show them only the features they might miss and then give them space to discover the rest of the house for themselves. Be discreetly available to answer questions before they leave.   YARD SIGNS Yard signs are THE most important sales tool a Seller has! The last study I saw done by the Realtors and a recent study by the Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M both showed that yard signs generated more business than classified ads, MLS, mail outs, word of mouth, neighbors and ALL OTHER ADVERTISING COMBINED! Make sure your sign can be seen by the people driving by. Place your sign so that it is flat to the traffic, not flat to the front of the house (unless you live at the end of a cul de sac). When the house is held OPEN make sure you have an OPEN sign in the front yard also. In other words don't use up all the OPEN signs leading people to your street. Save one so they will know which house is OPEN! Place an OPEN COME IN sign on the front door. What's the secret to a successful sale? FINANCING! FINANCING!! FINANCING!!! Without acceptable financing, no matter how easy or hard the sale was, the whole deal is off and you will have to start all over again. Almost anybody can get some kind of loan - even if your Buyer is just out of bankruptcy they can still get financing! The question is will they like the interest rate and terms that are available to them? That is a question that must be answered BEFORE you can accept a contract from ANY prospective Buyer, not just info you need from a Buyer who admits to credit or financing problems. A contract doesn't just become Void because a Buyer can't meet the terms. Until you get a written release from the Buyer having financing difficulties (which is not always easy to do) you can't sell your home to anyone else. National figures say that the average seller has at least one contract that doesn't work. To date, we have not had even one Seller have a contract problem when they had a Lender Partner check the Buyer out BEFORE the contract is written. Like we've already said, putting a sign in the yard and finding someone who wants your house is the easy part of the process, the hard part comes after you've found a Buyer! Don't worry that we haven't told you everything you could conceivably want to know about selling your home on the website, once your home is registered you will get the full copy of our FSBO First Aid kit. We won't leave you dangling! Between the FSBO Registry, our Lender Partners & Closing Partners we will tell you WHAT to do, HOW to do it, WHO does it, WHEN it is done, HOW LONG it normally takes, WHY you're doing it that way and the approximate COSTS! Questions?

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David Bennett

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1551 E. Spring Valley Rd. Suite #161
Richardson, Texas 75081

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